Robin Catlinghttps://robincatling.wordpress.com
Creative Writing and Other ErrorsSun, 18 Feb 2018 04:47:17 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/1970479289f42209f20f75d8d8d6d297?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngRobin Catlinghttps://robincatling.wordpress.com
The Voiceover Arteestehttps://robincatling.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/the-voiceover-arteeste/
https://robincatling.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/the-voiceover-arteeste/#respondThu, 19 Jan 2012 01:56:35 +0000http://robincatling.wordpress.com/?p=1163Continue reading →]]>What I think people are missing is the vital role of the voice arteeste. Because if you think about it, all True Art Is Incomprehensible. I don’t like to sound as if I’m speaking in capital letters, but…

I get called lots of things: voice talent, voice over talent, voice-over-talent with hyphens, voice actor, voice over actor, voice artist, but I prefer voice artiste.

Well, it’s better than “that pretentious b**** in the corner.”

I don’t think it can be understated that, really, the podcast is about me. I mean, how else is anyone going to know about the magazine and the feedback and the contact points unless I provide that information? The boys are terribly sweet and everything. A bit dim actually, but they mean well. And they have promised me my own show sometime in the next season.

I think reading aloud is a very under-rated talent. Some of the best voices in entertainment make a very good living out of it. Orson Wells, Sean Bean, Ronnie Corbett. And I’m much taller than him.

No, the Full Circle gig isn’t the best payday I’ve ever had. At all. In fact, we still haven’t ironed out the final contract with my agent.

It’s not as if it’s my main job. If I’m honest, I’m only using this to promote my new Fantasy Novel, “Darkness Invisible.” It’s out as an e-book later in the year on the flying Carpet imprint…

Robert McKee is the author of Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting. McKee has in his list of students 35 Oscar winners, acknowledgements from other screen-writing greats such as Goldman and Goldsmith. Engaged for lectures by bodies such as the New Zealand film Council where attendees included Peter Jackson and Jane Campion, McKee is regarded as an authority on screenwriting.

Appearing on the BBC World Service programme World Update (Jan 2, 2012), McKee presented a bleak outlook for film-making in 2012. Citing the expense of making a major Hollywood picture and the risk-averse character of the ‘expert’ executives in charge, we can expect more blockbusters in the mould of Pirates of the Caribbean 3, which McKee cited with undisguised contempt.

Instead, McKee sees the only light coming from TV, to which the best writers have migrated. McKee lauded Alan Ball (Oscar winning writer of American Beauty) for his work with HBO on “the single greatest TV show ever,” Six Feet Under.

Catching up with McKee after one of his famous screenwriting seminars, World Update diverted for a moment to include a talking head by attendee Russell Brand, who characteristically dissected the elements of the interview using McKee’s oft-derided formula for the screen-play. McKee’s ‘rules’ for movie-making are blamed for the formulaic nature of Hollywood screenplays, a charge he vehemently denies.

McKee himself identifies the tension between the creatives and the executives who describe everything in terms of product. Rather, McKee regards himself as a teacher of the basic chemistry of writing, but blames writers and executives for what they do with it – producing either the cure for cancer or DDT.

McKee is also critical of many screenwriters themselves. Why do they go to Hollywood except in the hope of picking up a $2-3m writing fee? “Greedy bastards,” is his uncompromising judgement of them, concluding they have no rights of complaint if they are prepared “to prostitute themselves” to Hollywood.

This was another enlightening, if lucky, find in the random mix of BBC World Service broadcasts. RC

World Update: Every morning, from Monday to Friday, World Update provides a comprehensive briefing on the stories that are making the news. Presented by Dan Damon, the programme speaks to the people at the centre of events to hear first hand accounts, gets detailed analysis from experts and showcases the extensive network of BBC correspondents around the world.

]]>https://robincatling.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/bleak-outlook-for-screenwriting-robert-mckee-on-world-update/feed/1robincatlingRobert McKee, author of 'Story'Review: Anonymoushttps://robincatling.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/review-anonymous/
https://robincatling.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/review-anonymous/#respondTue, 01 Nov 2011 17:50:26 +0000http://robincatling.wordpress.com/?p=1148Continue reading →]]>Roland Emmerich (yes, that Roland Emmerich) combines every Shakespearean conspiracy theory into this movie which posits that ‘William Shakespeare’ was the pen-name of one Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford and that Wil Shakespeare of the Rose, Swan and Globe theatres was in fact an illiterate hack actor fronting for the aristocrat.

Anonymous wraps up the Shakespeare mystery in the intrigues and plots of the Elizabethan Tudor court over forty years, made precarious by Elizabeth’s lack of a successor and the rivalries of courtiers and aristocrats. Filled with vain-glorious, flawed characters from the monarch down, Emmerich delivers a costume-soap-opera that is itself vain-glorious and flawed in equal measure.

It is an uncomfortable truth oft ignored by literature scholars that the identified Wil Shakespeare was a minor hack actor, a humble grammar school boy who finished with the theatre and retired to a hick town in the English Midlands to end his days as a grain merchant. He left no books or papers in his will, no attributable unfinished works or drafts. Yet ‘he’ is rightly acknowledged as one of the literary giants.

Anonymous sets forth from the theatre-staged prologue by RSC luvvie Derek Jacobi, the dark path to the creation and concealment of Shakespeare and cuts straight to a delightfully muddy, grubby and filthy German recreation of Tudor London, aided with buckets of CGI.

In Gregory Ellwood’s review, “Roland Emmerich’s ‘Anonymous’ is just plain silly.” Of course it is! Roland Emmerich makes profoundly silly movies – Stargate, Independence Day, Day After Tomorrow, 10,000BC. I went in with low expectations and was pleasantly surprised. The script almost holds together despite some melodramatic moments, but no worse than BBC TV’s The Tudors or the respectable but still risible Stoppard-scripted Shakespeare in Love.

There are some stand-out performances. Rhys Ifans turns in one of his best since Vanity Fair as the Earl of Oxford, bullied and blackmailed by Queen’s Chamberlain William Cecil, the excellent David Thewlis now coming to his acting peak.

Oxford’s selected front-man is Ben Johnson, played by an assured Sebastian Armesto, who hesitates whilst talentless chancer Wil Shakespeare, another slimy turn from Rafe Spall, jumps in to steal the credit. Inheritor Robert Cecil, played with hunchbacked malevolence by Edward Hogg, continues to hound Oxford and the playwrights to the end of Elizabeth’s reign.

Mother and daughter Vanessa Redgrave and Joely Richardson play the elder and younger Elizabeth, not such a Virgin Queen or talented stateswoman as the legend portrays. Vain, obstinate and autocratic in public; lonely and manipulated in private, sliding into dementia by the end, it is a very different performance from previous Elizabeths Glenda Jackson, Cate Blanchett or Judy Dench.

Emmerich and screen-writer Jon Orloff concoct a revisionist historical thriller wound around the Essex ‘revolt’ and several illegitimate heirs to the English throne, with the power of literature as propaganda much to the fore. Tudor England is a fascist police state, the artists are unwitting rebels and only late in life does Oxford attempt to strike at the ruling Cecil’s out of a lifetime grudge.

On-screen, the movie bats out of its’ league, looking about three times its’ budget. Attractively costumed, there is sadly an abundance of accurate, if absurd Elizabethan beards and hair; none more so than the Earl of Southampton’s ‘Captain Flasheart’ garb and wig from Blackadder. Sometimes the CGI fails badly, the dialog falls flat and few cliches of Elizabethan life are omitted.

The revelation of the vilest royal secrets is perhaps melodramatic, but so are King Lear and Oedipus Rex. In the litany of conspiracies and cover-ups, both the succession and the true identity of Shakespeare are lost to history. I am reminded that this small island nation was beleaguered and largely friendless throughout Elizabeth’s Golden Age. It was a Protestant police state where the penalty for sedition was arrest and torture, for treason was death. The theories will never be proved or disproved, so for now, however diverting is Emmerich’s tale, appreciate what remains, written by the hand of a genius: the works of Shakespeare. RC

* Morning Workshop attendees receive a discount voucher for lunch at the Lanes.

¥ Workshop with lunch includes 2-course lunch from 12.30-1.30pm.
Choose a main course and dessert from the menu of the day on arrival.
Please advise of any special dietary requirements at time of booking.

Tea, coffee and introductions on arrival.

For practical workshops, be prepared to write, read and discuss.

Attendees must pre-register below or call 01590 683837

Booking Form

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]]>https://robincatling.wordpress.com/2011/10/04/creative-writing-workshops-lymington/feed/0robincatlingImage Fountain Pen, version 3 by ~TeGadzsodillouTeLanes of Lymington Restaurant and BarTips from a Screenwriterhttps://robincatling.wordpress.com/2011/09/24/tips-from-a-screenwriter/
https://robincatling.wordpress.com/2011/09/24/tips-from-a-screenwriter/#respondSat, 24 Sep 2011 11:57:49 +0000http://robincatling.wordpress.com/?p=1122Continue reading →]]>TV and movie screen-writer Jeremy Brock (co-creator of BBC’s Casualty, writer of Last King of Scotland, Mrs Brown and Brideshead Revisited) could be heard on BBC World Service Radio this morning (Sat 24th Sept, 2011) to talk about screen adaptations.

Brock discussed adapting novels and fact-based projects for film.

On adapting the novel

Don’t keep the dialogue – most of it won’t work on screen, it’s too long, too dense.

Respect the spirit of the work – but don’t try to reproduce it on screen. Don’t be too literal or literary

Be bold in the process of contraction to fit the novel into the screen-time

Find an equivalent voice – the novel has the interior life and voice of it’s characters. You may try to reproduce this in voice-over, but it’s not a skilful movie technique and has limited use.

Short stories often provide more ‘room’ to adapt to the screen, it certainly sounds like the writer gets more creative fun filling-in a full script

On adapting ‘true stories’

Reality is sequential, the screenplay is consequential. Merely putting a sequence of events on screen will fail; we need to see the motivation and consequences of those events.

RC

]]>https://robincatling.wordpress.com/2011/09/24/tips-from-a-screenwriter/feed/0robincatlingBrideshead Revisited Movie 2008 adaption Jeremy BrockNot Outhttps://robincatling.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/not-out/
https://robincatling.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/not-out/#respondThu, 15 Sep 2011 00:16:03 +0000http://robincatling.wordpress.com/?p=1095Continue reading →]]>Frankly its a humiliation when you’re a good middle-order batsman pushed down the order behind the bowlers and the keeper. That’s where I found myself for that one-day game.

The recurring knee injury that would eventually put me out of the game had twanged in the field in the morning session, so I got pushed down to tail-end Charlie for our innings in the afternoon. The boys were holding the league leaders to a close finish when, late on, Johno got himself out with only one over left. That put me in with Bates, usually the bunny at number eleven. I turned down the offer of a runner, which I regretted as I tried not to limp on the walk out to the crease.

The scoreboard said we were eight behind, which gave me a dilemma; keep the strike and risk it, or turn it over to Bates who could at least run.

The bowler facing me was becoming my nemesis. A tall youngster, he had a baboon’s arms and legs and ran with a stoop. We likened him to the middle caveman in that ‘Ascent of Man’ cartoon – that is, until he took a massive final stride and stood up at the end of a fierce delivery. Both times we’d played before, this character had me out with a nick of outside edge, with me in better form. Practice during the week had been nothing special and the knee told me it wasn’t my day. But as the sports psychologists will tell you, the best atheletes develop the toughness to overcome a low mental state when it counts. Yeah, right.

I had to remember to breathe, as the bowler made his approach took that big final stride, stood up and lobbed a wide right past me. I hadn’t even moved.

Reset for the second. Same action, a better line this time. I lifted the bat; nothing.

Right before the third ball I noticed him scowling, a distration which meant I got late onto the ball. Contact! Not even thinking about the knee, we made two runs of it, keeping me on strike.

Five balls left with the extra. Six needed on the score.

Next ball, I stepped up early, smacked it full face to Square Leg where it dropped a few feet from the rope. Four! I could hear the boys applaud over on the veranda, I think from sheer surprise more than anything.

The opposition tried to hustle things along, hoping to rush us into a mistake. I swung at the next ball: nothing.

My knee was starting to burn, the sun was getting low and the apeman was scowling worse than ever.

The next delivery came off-line on my weak side and took a shocking in-swing. I got the bat to it and pushed as best I could, with no idea where it would go. It had no height, went by the legs of the in-feild, dropped to the grass and skittered on. An outfielder sprinted across, but by the time he closed, it tripped over the boundary rope. Four! We’d made it with two balls to spare.

I know this sounds like Boy’s Own Comic stuff; the kind of game you hate when you’re playing it but afterward, a win’s a glorious win. The truth is, it wasn’t an important game, we weren’t in the running for the trophy or anywhere near. But I do remember batting number eleven on a narrow margin, that apeman of a bowler and thinking as I walked in that I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

The tall one pulled his comrades out of the water when the landing craft beached at Normandy, dragged a few of the drowning and wounded up the beach at Normandy through a hail of bullets. This one came back to work at Watneys, but never drank. Retirement was never enough, he got a job at Tescos in the Arndale; talk to anyone, friends with anyone. The hospital screwed up and he died young at sixty-two.

The short one was a carpenter, among other things. He hung the doors in the House of Commons and made wooden milk bottles for trade shows at Olympia. This one marched up through Scicily and Italy. A tough march. Whether he was crackers before he went, or the War made him that way I don’t know. He finished in a bungalow in Raynes Park, living with a demented terrier and a demented woman from Wales. I never saw any friends. They used to go for holidays in Italy. He spoke a little Italian. He went back for the sunshine and the wine, he said. The cigarettes killed him in the end.

]]>https://robincatling.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/grandfathers/feed/0robincatlingTwo at the Tablehttps://robincatling.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/two-at-the-table/
https://robincatling.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/two-at-the-table/#respondTue, 23 Aug 2011 00:25:24 +0000http://robincatling.wordpress.com/?p=1041Continue reading →]]>I sat there more nervous than I’ve ever been. Some git taxi driver at the next table was shouting for his egg and chips.

I caught Julie’s wrist as she put my mug of tea down on the table. I sort of gestured and pulled her down to sit opposite me.

She looked at me blank, I couldn’t tell if she knew what was coming or not. She just waited.

“We can’t just keep messin’ about like we have done. I feel like – like we ought to do somethin’.”

Long, long silence.

” I know I’m no oil painting. And to be honest, you’ve probably got more money than me. Which ain’t much on cafe wages, I know.
But – we have a laugh don’t we?”

She looked at me.

“I’m not askin’ for nothing. I’m not expecting nothing. I just thought, like, we get on.”

She just looked at me and for a second she filled up and I thought she was going to cry. But Julie don’t cry any more, not after than the drunks and the wasters and the bullies she’s had to put up with. And the berks that don’t say nothing unless they’ve smoked something first or squirted it in their arm. At least I know I’m better than them.

But Julie looked away. Then she wiped the table in front of her with a jay-cloth from her apron, even though the table was spotless already.

She stood up, sudden. I thought, that’s it, I’ve blown it.

Then I got that look. That same look, I thought I’d seen before. Or I could have made it up.

She said, “don’t eat in here. Come back to mine. After.”

Then she went to fetch that whingeing bastard’s egg and chips.

But that was okay, ‘cos I knew we was all good.

All good.

]]>https://robincatling.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/two-at-the-table/feed/0robincatlingAn Early Memoryhttps://robincatling.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/an-early-memory/
https://robincatling.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/an-early-memory/#respondTue, 26 Jul 2011 00:29:40 +0000http://robincatling.wordpress.com/?p=1043Continue reading →]]>The trouble with earliest memories is knowing where they begin. What is actual memory, something concrete, real, beyond just disconnected images and impressions. One of my earliest memories dates from… perhaps three years old. Pushed along in a buggy, along a hilly, grey London street near where we lived then. The buggy’s rain hood pulled up, I, deeply sheltered not just to the elements but most of the world beyond. My mother in conversation with a woman, by their tone, a friend. Much of the conversation about me, but not to me. I, under a rain hood, was completely unable to contribute.

Where had we been, how old was I now, was I still ill? No matter how far I craned forward, which wasn’t far, as I was strapped into the buggy with a test pilot’s harness; I could see no more of my mother’s friend than the edges of a dark coat and a pair of stockinged legs above high street shoes. Now I think about it, was she such a friend, or just an acquaintance? Somebody you meet in the street, down the shops, at the library, every few days or weeks and perhaps, England being England, you never get around to introductions and never know their name.

There’s the mystery, there’s the memory. Who is this friend that’s talking about me, but not to me? Who was this mystery woman, reduced to a coat, a pair of stockings and a pair of shoes? I’m still interested in her, because, even if only in politeness, she was interested in me.

HELEN:
I expect I’ll see Nick at the school gates. I’ll invite him round for dinner.

PAUL:
What for?

HELEN:
He’s your business partner.

PAUL:
Silent partner. It’s his father’s money. My father’s company.

HELEN:
Both your fathers are dead.

PAUL:
Hm.

HELEN:
We never have people over.

PAUL:
Hm.

HELEN:
Nick doesn’t get out much now he’s on his own.

PAUL:
How do you know?

HELEN:
We talk. The school gate.

Pause . PAUL stops what he is doing. Looks up

HELEN:
His kids are in the same year as ours.

PAUL:
So?

HELEN:
Do you even send them a birthday card? He sent one to Sam this year.

PAUL:
Give him a medal.

HELEN:
He’s really much more interesting than you describe him.

PAUL:
I hardly know him.

HELEN:
You hardly know anyone.

SCENE FINISH ON PAUL, CLOSEUP REACTION.

CUT TO:

3. INT ROOM, DAY. ENCLOSED PRIVATE OFFICE .

SLADE:
You haven’t.

PAUL:
I haven’t…?

SLADE:
Thought about it. After.

SCENE FINISH ON PAUL, CLOSEUP REACTION.

CUT TO:

4. INT: PAUL’S WORK OFFICE, PAUL seated, NICK standing.

NICK:
I hope you don’t mind me coming over like this.

PAUL:
I’d rather you hadn’t.

NICK:
I thought we could be a little more… engaged?

PAUL:
You’re the silent partner.

NICK:
It’s my money that lets you do the talking

PAUL:
Your father’s money.

NICK:
Mine now.

PAUL:
So what do you want?

Nick:
I’d like to have some say in hanging onto it.

PAUL:
The company?

NICK:
The family money.

PAUL:
You want control of my company.

NICK:
Our company. Which, by the way, is in the red for the third time.

PAUL:
There’s a recession. –

NICK:
Which is why someone needs to do something.

PAUL:
I am doing something.

NICK:
You’re not changing anything. You never change.

PAUL:
I might surprise you.

NICK:
Helen said you could be difficult .

PAUL:
Helen said?

SCENE FINISH ON PAUL, CLOSEUP REACTION.

CUT TO:

EXT: PAYPHONE.

PAUL (hesitant):

I was told to call this number… if I needed a problem solved. Yes… In cash.
Yes, I have it… A meeting? I didn’t expect a… Yes, of course. Bona fide,
I understand. Yes. Where? Tomorrow? No, I can’t make it then, I’ve got…
No, no! I’ll be there.

SCENE FINISH ON PAUL, CLOSEUP REACTION.

CUT TO:

INT, KITCHEN, PLANE HOUSE

HELEN:
Who’s Mr Slade?

PAUL:What?

HELEN:
In your diary. Mr Slade. Mid-afternoon appointment?

PAUL:
Stationery .

HELEN:
Stationery?

PAUL:
He’s working up some stationery designs. For the company.

HELEN:
Since when did you care about stationery?

SCENE FINISH ON PAUL, CLOSEUP REACTION.

CUT TO :

7. INT ROOM, DAY. ENCLOSED PRIVATE OFFICE .

PAUL:
Oh, my God.

SLADE:
You contacted me. You made this arrangement.

PAUL:
Oh shit. Shit, shit shit…

SLADE:
I hope you’re not considering calling this off?

PAUL:
What have I done…?

PAUL takes out mobile phone, starts dialling. SLADE reaches across gently but firmly takes it from Paul’s fingers, lays it on the table between them. PAUL looks at it like it a venomous serpent.

SLADE:
You haven’t done anything. Yet.

PAUL:
What was I thinking…?

SLADE:
You know, you calling this off would give me something of a problem.

PAUL:
Problem?

SLADE:
You go ahead, you bind us together. You call this off, I have a loose end. I can’t afford loose ends.

PAUL:
Loose end?

SLADE:
So you need to decide.

SCENE FINISH ON PAUL, CLOSEUP REACTION.

END

[This version of Mr Slade is the beginning of a short film script in development]